So following on from last time, I am reframing my anxiety as frustration, frustration at standing still and not doing anything in the hopes that when I feel this way I take a step back, and get to work rather than letting it overwhelm me which is what I usually do.
I need to focus but the way my brain works I need multiple projects to move between so mentally when I can’t do one I do the other. For example, when I am writing on any given day I will sit at my computer and write across two to four pieces of writing I have started, as I get bored I can procrastinate on another.
So l mind mapped a few times and things got tangled so I decided to Focus. So narrowing what I am doing for a time. One of the things is to find one day a day-a-week job, There is Making, Self Promotion. Selling is mixed into each section.
Making
Ceramics Handbuilding Project
JC Robinson Project Crowd Funder
Print on Demand Standalone.
Promotion
Blog
Mailing List
Blackpool Social Club
Finding Outlets.
This is a temporary list where things will change as these big projects are completed.
Making:
Ceramics Handbuilding Project, is a longer-term project, I made paper clay the other day, which you can see here. But the outlet for this project is going to be in-person events and it will be next year before I do those, so it is looking at ceramic events like Potfest and Ceramic Art Wales, those sorts of events where the attendees have an interest in ceramics, also gallery settings. I don’t know about selling them online, I will have to test their ability to be sent through the post first.
J.C. Robinson, this is a painting project that started off as a collaboration between myself and the New Langdale photographers. There are over 30 paintings, and I need to sit down and write the book which will have the pictures in. I need to do more research still as I don’t think I have every building, but also because I forget to write things done like when buildings were built, and so on. I also need to write the crowd funder, photograph or scan the missing buildings, because I only have sixteen of them digitised, and I will need them. I also want to do some smaller sketches to explain things, so there is that too. Is a big project. But I will advertise it locally, contact every one and everyone, have prints available at a lower price. I am not sure of the best way to do the crowdfunding yet.
The Print on Demand project is a massive one it is almost two hundred buildings, it’s a really niche project with a really niche audience, which is worldwide. The plan is to paint a few a week, first in opaque media and then in translucent media, thus doubling the size of the project. It is a niche that was requested but not one I want to be known for so I don’t want to say what it is. But I will use Facebook to advertise it from a new page I need to build (the audience will be very very aimed). I am not too worried about size as the plan is to digitise all the paintings and have them printable on a variety of things, and the originals can be forgotten about.
Promotion
I want to achieve the goal of writing for my blog once a week on average so thats been added, I always found writing blogs seems to draw more attention to my website than social media does but then I don’t have a large social media following and I find that my doing of other things suffers from me obsessing over it and trying to grow the audience which leaves me nowhere. I like writing longer-form content, which isn’t a social media thing really, no one reads a whole paragraph on social media, and it’s more about getting people to spam in the comments to get your post more engagement. Social media used to feel personal but Meta and the X company have tried their best to kill it all.
My Mailing List is something that I really need to focus on putting out once a month, I also need to change the reward. The other thing is actually to start getting some names on there of people that want to read. But yeah maybe a monthly offer for the mailing list? Plenty of ideas, let’s just start with a post a month plus getting that new reward in place.
Blackpool Social Club is the local Arts and Culture Newsletter/Newspaper. I recently wrote a piece for them, and I have handed them a poetry project I made and have half a dozen unfinished. The aim is to use it to improve my writing skills, and to try to write for an audience, Antonia is an amazing editor whereas I have a poor habit of throwing words at a page, and then spending time trying to work out the multicoloured squiggles and changing things so they vanish.
More Outlets is the hardest on my list, honestly, I don’t like “sale or return” but I need to find more places that will stock my work, and have it on display. I need to go back out there, look for galleries and shops and make connections, and contacts. It is essentially more writing, which is still in my head my worst skill. Aside here on my website, you can go to Aunty Social and see the work in person. Or contact me and I can arrange a studio visit with whatever you would like to see.